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About

Genius Annotation

Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

“Musée des Beaux Arts” (French for “Museum of Fine Arts”) was written in 1938. The title refers to Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, where Auden spent some time looking at Old Master paintings, especially Pieter Breughel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

The poet explores the content of the painting, and draws from it the essential moral, that human pain and tragedy exist alongside those who are free from suffering. Stylistically, the poem is conversational and contemplative, while at the same time his observations are sharply perceptive.

Two important developments occurred in Auden’s life and writing at this time, just before the start of WW2. He moved to American and began a transition from political to more spiritual subjects.

This poem combines traditional and modern forms of verse, as the detailed annotations will explore.

Structure
The poem comprises two stanzas of thirteen and eight lines each. The rhyme scheme has no regular pattern, Line lengths are varied, as is syntax, with long and short clauses that imitate the rhythms of conversation. Punctuation is an important aspect of the poem, emphasising pauses and enhancing the sense of thoughtfulness and debate. There is only one full stop at the end, so that the body of the poem is one continuous flow.

Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a third person narrator, addressing the reader in the form of a monologue. The tone is philosophical and the observations perceptive.

There are some amusing references, for example the dogs' live a ‘doggy life’, and the horse ‘scratches its innocent behind on a tree’. In the second stanza the depiction of Breughel’s painting is vivid, particularly Icarus’s white legs disappearing in the green sea.

For comparison see William Carlos Williams; Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and The Hunters in the Snow.

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